Serokomla is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

Łuków County __NOTOC__ Łuków County ( pl, powiat łukowski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland. It was established on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms ...

Lublin Voivodeship The Lublin Voivodeship, also known as the Lublin Province (Polish: ''województwo lubelskie'' ), is a voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in southeastern part of the country. It was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former Lublin, Che� ...

, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the

gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' , from German ''Gemeinde'' meaning ''commune'') is the principal unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,477 gminas throughout the country, encompassing over 4 ...

(administrative district) called

Gmina Serokomla __NOTOC__ Gmina Serokomla is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Łuków County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Serokomla, which lies approximately south of Łuków and north of the regional capital Lubli ...

. It lies approximately south of

Łuków Łuków is a city in eastern Poland with 30,727 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2005). Since 1999, it has been situated in the Lublin Voivodeship, previously it had belonged to the Siedlce Voivodeship (between 1975–1998). It is the capital of Ł ...

and north of the regional capital

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

. The village has a population of 1,060. It was stripped of city rights during the

Russian Partition The Russian Partition ( pl, zabór rosyjski), sometimes called Russian Poland, constituted the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that were annexed by the Russian Empire in the course of late-18th-century Partitions of Po ...

in 1869.

History

The history of Serokomla dates back to 1573, when a nobleman Piotr Kijenski founded a town based on

Magdeburg rights Magdeburg rights (german: Magdeburger Recht; also called Magdeburg Law) were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish Law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within ...

. The town laid in the Lukow Land,

Lublin Voivodeship (1474–1795) Lublin Voivodeship ( la, Palatinatus Lublinensis; pl, Województwo Lubelskie) was an administrative region of the Kingdom of Poland created in 1474 out of three eastern counties of Sandomierz Voivodeship and lasting until the Partitions of Polan ...

in the province of

Lesser Poland Lesser Poland, often known by its Polish name Małopolska ( la, Polonia Minor), is a historical region situated in southern and south-eastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Kraków. Throughout centuries, Lesser Poland developed a s ...

. It was bought by the Firlej family in the late 16th century and remained in private hands until the

Partitions of Poland The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 12 ...

. After the

Congress of Vienna The Congress of Vienna (, ) of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon B ...

(1815) Serokomla found itself in the Russian-controlled

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

, in which it remained until

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. It became part of the

Lublin Voivodeship (1919–39) The Lublin Voivodeship, also known as the Lublin Province (Polish: ''województwo lubelskie'' ), is a voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in southeastern part of the country. It was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former Lublin, Che ...

in the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of ...

World War II

In early October 1939, most of Serokomla was destroyed by the

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...

, during the

Battle of Kock (1939) The Battle of Kock was the final battle in the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II in Europe. It took place between 2–5 October 1939, near the town of Kock, in Poland.Zaloga, S.J., 2002, Poland 1939, Oxford: Osprey Publishin ...

. After the battle, the Germans shot 32 Polish soldiers and civilians there in revenge. On April 14, 1940, the ''SS'' with the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

captured 217 local inhabitants including women and children. All were shot by ''

Sonderdienst ''Sonderdienst'' (german: Special Services) were the Nazi German paramilitary formations created in semicolonial General Government during the occupation of Poland in World War II. They were based on similar '' SS'' formations called ''Volksdeuts ...

'' formation in a mass execution nearby. A small Nazi exploitation ghetto was set up for the Jewish community. Then on the morning of September 22, 1942, the travelling Nazi German

Reserve Police Battalion 101 Reserve Police Battalion 101 (german: Reserve-Polizei-Bataillon 101) was in Nazi Germany a paramilitary formation of the uniformed police force known as Order Police (''Ordnungspolizei#Police battalions, Ordnungspolizei'', abbreviated as Orpo), o ...

under the command of Captain Wohlauf rounded up the 200 to 300 Jews of Serokomla and shot them in the necks one by one at the crest of a waste dump outside the town. The bodies were left unburied and the Germans departed at 3pm. Captain Wohlauf didn't even remember later he was at Serokomla amid the many deportation actions to

death camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

s they conducted in the vicinity.

References

{{Gmina Serokomla

Serokomla Serokomla is a village in Łuków County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Serokomla. It lies approximately south of Łuków and north of the regional capital Lublin. Th ...

Lesser Poland Lublin Voivodeship (1474–1795) Siedlce Governorate Lublin Governorate Lublin Voivodeship (1919–1939) Nazi war crimes in Poland Holocaust locations in Poland Reserve Police Battalion 101